TRADITIONAL AND NONTRADITIONAL DETERMINANTS OF HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURES ON SELECTED FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

Nontraditional variables such as liquid assets, households management style, and psychological levels influence both the type and variety of fruits and vegetables served by Washington households. Among traditional variables, household size, education levels, and geographic area within Washington State are relatively important factors. Income and occupation are relatively weak as explanatory variables. The liquid asset levels consume a larger amount and a greater variety of fruits and vegetables.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Hawaiian Picture‐Winged Drosophila Exhibit Adaptive Population Divergence along a Narrow Climatic Gradient on Hawaii Island

1. Anthropogenic influences on global processes and climatic conditions are increasingly affecting ecosystems throughout the world. 2. Hawaii Island’s native ecosystems are well studied and local long‐term climatic trends well documented, making these ecosystems ideal for evaluating how native taxa may respond to a warming environment. 3.This study documents adaptive divergence of populations of a Hawaiian picture‐winged Drosophila, D. sproati, that are separated by only 7 km and 365 m in elevation. 4.Representative laboratory populations show divergent behavioral and physiological responses to an experimental low‐intensity increase in ambient temperature during maturation. The significant interaction of source population by temperature treatment for behavioral and physiological measurements indicates differential adaptation to temperature for the two populations. 5.Significant differences in gene expression among males were mostly explained by the source population, with eleven genes in males also showing a significant interaction of source population by temperature treatment. 6.The combined behavior, physiology, and gene expression differences between populations illustrate the potential for local adaptation to occur over a fine spatial scale and exemplify nuanced response to climate change

Knot Theory in Virtual Reality

Throughout the study of Knot Theory, there have been several programmatic solutions to common problems or questions. These solutions have included software to draw knots, software to identify knots, or online databases to look up pre-computed data about knots. We introduce a novel prototype of software used to study knots and links by using Virtual Reality. This software can allow researchers to draw links in 3D, run physics simulations on them, and identify them. This technique has not yet been rigorously explored and we believe it will be of great interest to Knot Theory researchers. The computer code is written in C# and all code has been made publicly available

The Relationship Between Social Integration, Attitude Toward School and Absenteeism

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between social integration, absenteeism, and attitude toward school at Frontier Junior High in Moses Lake, Washington

The decline in trust in the European Union

After twenty years, the European Union is undoubtedly at a crossroads, as its institutions try to manage the sovereign debt crisis in member states and the uncertainty surrounding the future direction of the project. The challenges the European Union has faced, and the response to them, have drawn considerable attention on the capacity of the European Union to manage the interests of the Europeans. In this dissertation, I discuss the process of Europeanization and why it has resulted in suboptimal outputs. Additionally, I discuss the perception of a democratic deficit in the European Union. The purpose of this is to see how perception of the capacity of the European Union to manage European interests and perception of a democratic deficit impact trust levels on the European Union. Using Eurobarometer 71.3 data, I find support for the hypothesis that those who perceive shortcomings in both of these aspects will be less likely to trust the European Union than those who do not. I argue that this finding makes the handling of sovereign debt crisis very important in determining the levels of trust the EU will enjoy moving beyond the crisis. Finally, I conclude with some thoughts about European identity in the contemporary era, and ask if the construction of a European identity might help the project withstand criticisms over policy and responsiveness

The resurgence of the far-right in European politics: analysis of the French, Italian, Austrian, and Belgian cases

The resurgence of the far-right in European politics has been cause for alarm on a continent which so recently suffered the consequences of the rise of fascism in the early twentieth century. Political observers have looked on anxiously while far-right parties in Austria and Italy have participated in the governing coalitions of those countries. In 2002, Jean Marie Le Pen stunned the world with his advancement into the second round of the French Presidential election. Why is the radical-right so strong right now? Why do voters cast their ballots in support of far-right parties? In this thesis, I have examined these questions and offered some insight into how far-right parties rose to prominence in France, Italy, Austria, and Belgium. I hypothesize that voters who supported far-right parties in the last parliamentary elections have less trust in both domestic and supranational political institutions, follow politics less closely, are more likely to feel alienated, and are more likely to feel that immigrants take away jobs than their counterparts who supported mainstream parties. My findings reveal that these hypotheses were particularly accurate in France and Belgium, but did not correctly depict the sentiments of Italian far-right voters. This finding suggests that far-right parties are perhaps not as similar as some people believe, but are characterized by different goals and platforms that appeal to different bases cross-nationally